Ventura sues groundwater supplier for third time

FILE PHOTO / THE STAR
Michael Solomon, general manager of the United Water Conservation District, looks across Lake Piru. The reservoir was created with construction of the Santa Felicia Dam in the 1950s to manage groundwater pumped by farmers and cities along the Santa Clara River and Oxnard Plain. Solomon’s district owns the dam, lake and key downstream facilities.

The city of Ventura is suing the United Water Conservation District over 2013-14 rates it says violate state law.

United has failed again to prove residential water customers get three times the benefit as agricultural customers and should be paying rates three times as much, city officials said Tuesday.

“Municipal customers use about 25 percent of the water, yet pay for nearly 50 percent of United’s costs,” Mayor Cheryl Heitmann said in a news release announcing the lawsuit. “To move forward, we must insist that United’s rate process be transparent and equitable for all customers.”

This is the third time the city has sued United over its rate structure. Lawsuits over the 2011-12 and 2012-13 charges were combined and heard together last year in Santa Barbara Superior Court. In that case, the judge ruled United had failed to prove the 3-to-1 benefit, even as its rate structure conformed with the state’s water code.

The code mandates the 3-1 ratio, but the newer Proposition 218 says any difference in fees must be fully explained.

Ventura won more than $1 million in the suit, which is being held in a reserve account as United’s appeal works its way through the system. United officials deferred to the code and said they didn’t realize they had to prove the benefit.

In setting the 2013-14 structure, United gave the city studies it says proves the difference in benefits, General Manager Mike Solomon said.

“We did what the law told us to do,” he said. “The difference now is we quantified the 13-14 rates. We did it in two different ways.”

The city disagrees with the studies.

“They set up new cost-of-service studies that we don’t believe were true cost-of-services studies,” Ventura Water General Manager Shana Epstein said.

Under the 2013-14 rate structure, United is charging the city $119.25 per acre-foot of water for non-agricultural uses and $39.75 for agricultural customers, the same as it charged the previous year. In the 2011-12 fiscal year, United charged Ventura $85.50 for non-agricultural uses and $28.50 for agricultural customers.